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er into a row of seats and then they circled the whole place seriously laura and i had to move out of the way when a sea lion came barreling through our seats it was cool a bizarre pet cemetery at the lisbon zoo rip gigi we were able to get really close to the giraffes posted by matt at 7 20 am 2 comments labels chair lift instituto superior técnico lisbon portugal sea lions zoo sunday august 23 2009 nationale park de hoge veluwe after seeing rotterdam on laura s last friday in the nl we set off the next day for het nationale park de hoge veluwe hoge veluwe national park near arnhem we had been told time and again by dutch friends that this was a site we needed to see by the way unless you re dutch however you re attempting to pronounce hoge veluwe is almost certainly wrong hoge veluwe national park is an interesting assembly of forests sand dunes heathland bicycle paths and randomly enough a high quality art museum despite being in an isolated and unexpected location the kröller müller museum which was formed from the art collection of german born helene kröller müller contains the work of many famous artists including van gogh picasso mondrian seurat and gauguin st hubertus hunting lodge former home of the kröller müller family we spent a day biking around in the park in nice weather we didn t see any of the deer boar mouflon or other animals that call the park home unfortunately great tits at right were nowhere to be seen either but we greatly enjoyed the park and its miles of bike trails that snake over rapidly changing and scenic terrain posted by matt at 10 00 am 0 comments labels arnhem hoge veluwe saturday august 22 2009 rotterdam at last on laura s final weekend in the netherlands we stopped for a night in nearby rotterdam although rotterdam is only a little farther from delft than the hague and much closer than amsterdam we went nearly a full year without really venturing into the city well we tried to see the city back in winter but were confronted with wind so cold that we basically walked out of the train station and right back into it rotterdam doesn t get the international pub of amsterdam or the hague but it has some bragging points it s always in competition for busiest port in the world though wikipedia says it is currently second to shanghai it s also known as a tremendously young city sometimes called the youngest in europe and is the 2009 european youth capital also there s a bit of a rivalry between rotterdam and amsterdam that is manifested primarily on the soccer field a vast majority of rotterdam was destroyed in may of 1940 when germany invaded the netherlands since the war ended rotterdam has been the center of a lot of architectural experimentation which makes it both strikingly modern in some respects and obscenely ugly in others the netherlands is in fact a modern architectural epicenter and it wasn t long ago that i encountered a whole train car full of us architecture students touring the country the part of rotterdam that all the guidebooks tell you to see is delfshaven which is the historical part that looks like every other city in the netherlands now i like the canal looks of this country a lot but to those guidebook writers i have to ask why am i going to go to rotterdam unique for the fact that it doesn t look like every other dutch city to see the part of it that does delfshaven wasn t one of our stops though i m sure it s nice our visit centered on the waterfront which we saw by pannenkoek boot that s pancake boat a boat that serves pancakes the pancakes were mediocre but the view was very nice with towering colorful buildings and creative bridges we set off from next to the euromast above right the tallest structure in rotterdam we didn t go inside it but it offers food and drink a panoramic view of the city and various creative ways for visitors to plummet from the tower s apex erasmusbrug erasmus bridge nicknamed the swan we were particularly excited to stay in the cube houses one of the aforementioned architectural experiments that was recently converted into a stayok hostel as you can imagine from their shape and unconventional orientation relative to the earth s gravitational field the rooms are awkward that doesn t make staying in one any less cool cube houses near to the cube houses in oude haven we had a nice view of the harbor area while we enjoyed some heinekens willemsbrug is near to erasmusbrug and both span the nieuwe maas witte huis white house the tallest skyscraper in europe when it was built in 1898 you can find a few more pictures on flickr posted by matt at 3 21 pm 0 comments labels amsterdam bridges cube houses delfshaven delft den haag erasmusbrug euromast european youth capital pancake boat pannenkoek boot rotterdam stayok white house willemsbrug witte huis sunday august 16 2009 goodbye amsterdam i can t imagine that there are many cities in the world that can match the personality of amsterdam it is an endlessly entertaining place with its unique canal house looks frenetic pace diverse culture and a population of people who are dedicated to walking their own path in life it s an awesome city and speaking from experience it grows on you every time you emerge from amsterdam centraal and look out over the narrow crooked buildings i m leaving the country in two weeks so yesterday i went to amsterdam for the last time i spent the day enjoying the sunshine the crowds and the atmosphere i went to the amsterdam history museum to learn a little more about the history of the city i walked miles and miles i watched street performances i paid 3 at cannabis college to stand in front of a 5 foot tall cannabis plant just for the novelty of it i laughed at darth vader and the grimm reaper and batman on dam square i walked the streets of the revived jordaan the neighborhood that many of the 100 000 jews killed by the nazis including anne frank herself called home i slipped into an art gallery showcase and admired the urban artwork i ate an awesome ethiopean dinner in which i scooped my food from the plate with injera bread and drank my ethiopean beer from a coconut shell yeah i m going to miss amsterdam outside the jordaan a legal cannabis plant posted by matt at 6 55 pm 1 comments labels amsterdam cannabis college dam square ethiopian history museum semhar thursday august 13 2009 bratislava slovakia the 13th and final country on our european adventure turned out to be slovakia though only because vienna and the capital of slovakia bratislava are the two closest european capitals they re separated by only about 50 miles or around an hour train ride we couldn t pass up the chance to jump off from vienna sometimes called the gateway to the east to go east behind the former iron curtain always fascinating another time previous times being prague and east berlin bratislava borders both austria and hungary and is split by the danube which as you ll recall from the last post was bursting from its shores at the time of our visit at right you see the nový most new bridge straddling the river with its famous ufo restaurant on top laura and i didn t have any significant plans for bratislava other than to walk around get a feel for the place and take advantage of cheap eastern european food and drink on that note slovakia just recently converted to the euro in january we briefly walked up the hill to bratislava castle which provided an excellent view of the city below you see the spire of st martin s cathedral st martin s cathedral the view also afforded us a glimpse of the many identical soviet era panelák or panel buildings on the other side of the danube these are pre fabricated concrete buildings that provide a hideous addition to many city skylines in the former eastern bloc you can find a picture of slovak panelák on wikipedia meanwhile the old parts of bratislava were very attractive and inviting below you see michael s gate at center built around 1300 the streets were lined with sidewalk cafes and people happily enjoying the sunny weather michael s gate we also stumbled by a market for artisans and those hocking tourist swag during out walk through the city seen below small market this statue of a jovial napoleonic soldier was a favorite of ours he s like an old chum when you lean over the bench with him but he s just a creepy frenchman when he is leaning over your shoulder napoleonic soldier you can find more pictures from bratislava at flickr posted by matt at 10 50 pm 0 comments labels austria bratislava bratislava castle eastern bloc gateway to the east hungary iron curtain michael s gate napoleonic panelák solider statue st martin s cathedral vienna saturday august 8 2009 melk during our visit to vienna we used the city as a home base to see some other nearby sites our first day trip was to nearby melk austria a sleepy and picturesque town located right on the danube river at right and known for melk abbey below you see two views of the colorful city one from a high point and another from street level laura and i enjoyed walking the streets of the quiet town and of course happily stopped for a quiet lunch at a sidewalk cafe melk abbey was quite a site to behold although an abbey has been on the spot for many centuries the structure seen today was built in the early 1700 s in baroque style due to recent restoration the brightly colored abbey gleams and the ornate stylings occasionally give way to some surprisingly modern interior exhibits involving neon lights and lots of glass melk abbey a statue just inside the entrance melk abbey also contained some very nice gardens through which we took a stroll grounds of melk abbey melk is an incredibly picturesque town and we have many more photographs that you can see on flickr wikipedia also has some very nice pictures of the interior of melk abbey in returning to vienna we had planned to take a danube river boat for part of the trip but we were startled to discover the entire region was in the midst of some heavy flooding the czech republic saw the worst of it but even the danube river in melk was nearly bursting from its shores i read that the albertina museum in vienna where we didn t personally see any obtrusive effects of the heavy rains even had to relocate some stored paintings from a leaky underground storage area the boats in melk of course were not running on that day so we took the train back to vienna posted by matt at 11 00 am 0 comments labels austria danube river flooding melk melk abbey vienna saturday august 1 2009 fietstocht naar het strand bike trip to the beach the weather today was absolutely phenomenal sunny maybe even 80 f naturally there was no better place to go than nearby scheveningen beach in the hague especially since today schollenpop a free pop music festival was being held there apparently the entire population of the netherlands had the same idea north scheveningen from de pier i didn t really know where the music festival was and figured i would hear it when i arrived but this was not so hey it s a big beach while looking for it i was easily sidetracked into exploration in the past laura and i have basically visited the central portion of the beach but this time i ventured to the north side where everything starts getting glitzy i walked for instance over the top of de pier an interesting pier shopping mall casino bungee jumping structure yes that is a person dangling on the end of that bungee line in the picture at right it naturally turned out that the music festival was on the complete opposite side of the beach from me and in fact was not even accessible via the beach itself in a country with tons of waterways dikes etc this situation often happens you re standing at point a and you can see point b heck you might even be able to talk to someone at point b but you ve got to ride a mile to get there when i finally did arrive there was decent music abundant sunshine and cheap beer life was good schollenpop after tiring of the beach i made my way back home by bike through the hague which is probably the least fun city to ride a bike through in all of the netherlands because it is really spread out and has lots of car traffic this results in bicycles like cars having to stop at lights every ten seconds luckily the hague is a particularly cultured city that features some kind of sculpture or memorial at roughly those same intervals on the lange voorhout a famous street in town for instance i saw some cool sculptures by mexican artist javier marín it was a nice day in the sunshine when i got home i thought i d end it by picking out a nice dinner at the grocery store i settled on what i thought from the picture on the package to be a ready made shrimp stir fry unfortunately when i got it home i discovered i had bought 400g that s 0 8 lbs of frozen crawfish lessons learned this bad karma is what i get for not putting more effort into learning dutch rivierkreeftjes is dutch for crawfish don t ever eat 0 8 lbs of crawfish in one sitting again posted by matt at 11 15 pm 0 comments labels bungee crawfish de pier den haag javier marín lange voorhout rivierkreeftjes scheveningen schollenpop the hague vienna for our last sojourn outside the netherlands laura and i visited wien österreich better known in non german circles as vienna austria the name österreich literally means eastern empire and like everything we saw there hearkens back to the days of the hapsburg family and the austro hungarian empire as bill bryson says in neither here nor there no one clings to former glories as the austrians do this is evident in the grandeur that permeates much of the city center from the palaces to the prominent monuments to national heroes like mozart another famous austrian whose name popped up proudly and frequently was of course sigmund freud wolfgang amadeus mozart while in vienna we were pleased to see several palaces below you see laura standing in front of the belvedere palace which houses the austrian gallery we also visited the impressive hofburg palace whose interior we viewed as part of an exhibit centered on the lives of emperor franz joseph 1830 1916 and his wife empress elizabeth of bavaria or sisi 1837 1898 sisi was beautiful mostly absentee and was assassinated in geneva in 1898 since that time the image of the beautiful and mysterious empress has been romanticized usually for economic gain franz joseph was still emperor when his heir franz ferdinand was assassinated in sarajevo in 1914 and the dominoes of ww i began to fall he died before seeing austria s defeat laura in front of belvedere palace the dome of hofburg palace wien is also a little famous or infamous for its wine which we happily sipped at local heurigen wine gardens in the mid 80 s austria found itself at the center of a scandal when it was discovered that many wine producers were using anti freeze ethylene glycol as a wine sweetener today all of that has been cleaned up and we were able to enjoy our wine in a very nice outdoor a...